Entries Posted in Products & Services

Elvis is back in the building! Earlier this month, the U.S. Postal Service previewed the new Elvis Presley stamp that will be released in August as part of the popular music icons series of commemorative stamps that include the likes of Ray Charles, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix.

As the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis is regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century. And his enormous star power certainly carried over to his stamp. Elvis mania helped make the original Elvis stamp, issued in 1993, the most popular commemorative stamp of all time, according to the National Postal Museum.

Given that history, will the new stamp featuring a 1955 photograph of the King be another top seller?

Elvis isn’t the only celestial body making postage stamp news this month. Also getting attention is the 1991 Pluto stamp, which scientists affixed to NASA’s New Horizons probe that just made contact with the dwarf planet. According to a recent Washington Post blog, when the stamp was designed as part of a planetary set, Pluto was the only planet that lacked a robotic companion – no spacecraft had ever been sent to explore it. So there was no American robot to show off in the stamp illustration like for the other planets. Instead, the words “Pluto, not yet explored” were put on the stamp. Some scientists said they saw this as a sort of “call to arms” to explore Pluto.

Now that Pluto is getting its day in the sun, so to speak, the Pluto stamp is too – even if its words are no longer true. A few years ago, the New Horizons team petitioned the Postal Service for a new stamp but there’s no word on whether that will happen.

Stamps hold a unique place in American culture, which may be why so many people feel strongly about what should or shouldn’t be on them. Our previous blog on the Harry Potter stamp drew a record number of comments. The stamp was controversial because, for one reason, the subject matter – a British wizard created by a British novelist – wasn’t strictly American.

Well, Elvis and the U.S. space program are as American as apple pie. So their stamps are not likely to be nearly as controversial. Still, here’s your chance to weigh in with your favorite stamp and what others you might like to see.

People may not like getting bills, but they prefer to receive them in the mail and pay them online.

That’s the finding of our study on transactional mail, which is made up mostly of household bills and payments moving as First-Class Mail.

We collaborated with the consulting firm InfoTrends to analyze 3 months’ worth of customer billing data from a major U. S. utility. We also jointly interviewed executives who manage bill delivery and payment processing to help determine how the utility’s delivery-and-payment costs and customer preferences compare with those at other utilities and even in other industries.

As you can see in our new white paper, Will the Check Be in the Mail? An Examination of Paper and Electronic Transactional Mail, we found that despite a clear preference to pay bills online, 91 percent of customers prefer receiving their bills by mail. Even among the utility’s newest customers — those expected to be more digitally savvy — an average of 89 percent opted to have their bills mailed to them, though, like the others, most preferred paying online.

The reasons are pretty simple. People like having a physical mailpiece as a reminder to pay and as a record-keeping tool. The execs we spoke with said our results are consistent with what they’ve been seeing and hearing.

It’s also consistent with another clear directive from consumers: they want options in just about everything, including bill delivery and payment. So, in addition to being good news for mail, our findings suggest that a company offering a variety of bill delivery and payment options will keep customers happy.

Do you prefer receiving your bills via regular mail or email/text? How about paying – do you pay online or ‘is the check in the mail’?

The sometimes elusive concept of “brand” is very real and useful to businesses and organizations of all kinds and sizes. A brand encompasses an array of tangible and intangible elements, from a company’s name and logo to consumers’ expectations of a particular product or service. For instance, the names and logos of Mercedes Benz and Lexus usually make people think of reliable, well-built, luxury cars. Wal-Mart and Target are most often associated with large inventories of everyday goods at discounted prices.

The U.S. Postal Service has a brand, too. Its attributes include reliability, convenience, value, and tradition. Where the Postal Service differs from many other businesses and organizations is in the management of its brand: To get the most financial value out of their brands, successful firms treat them like other assets and carefully measure and monitor them. Brand valuation is an important management tool used to do this. But while the Postal Service has worked to enhance some of its brand attributes, it has never conducted a formal brand valuation.

We worked with Premier Quantitative Consulting (PQC), experts in brand valuation, to develop an estimate of the Postal Service’s brand value. Based on extensive research and analysis detailed in our new white paper, The Value of the U.S. Postal Service Brand, PQC conservatively estimates the Postal Service brand value is $3.6 billion, based on fiscal year 2013 financial data (the most recent available when PQC performed its study). This means the Postal Service would forego at least an additional $3.6 billion in future cash flows if it had no discernable brand. In other words, if the Postal Service were indistinguishable from a generic delivery brand, it would not realize these significant cash flows.

PQC also suggested some ways the Postal Service could further enhance its brand. For example, the organization could (1) aggressively respond to inaccurate “doomsday” reports and predictions about its future, (2) involve employees – who are truly “the face of the brand” – in implementing brand strategies, and (3) expand licensing activities.

Do you think the Postal Service brand is important? What could the Postal Service do to enhance its brand? What are some attributes you associate with various brands?

Pages

Recent Blog Comments

Dear USPS,
I had an opportunity to try your automated postal service Kiosk for the first time.
I am an engineer / scientist and so these type of systems interest me.
I thought I would pass along my experience, in the event you...

Orange, Texas needs supervision!! They hire contract people for delivery of my mail but I never receive anything on time it shows for delivery. You contact Orange, Texas Post Office answer I always get is "we have 40 people delivering mail...